Werth: My fellow Gab-mericans—
Wise: Um, hi there, Werth. Sounds like you're getting pretty ramped up for the Presidential campaign.
Werth: I do love convention season, full of rousing speeches, pageantry, balloons—
Wise: —and running mates disguised as a fitness regime?
Werth: Of course, the biggest star to emerge has already been a star for decades. Only this time he brought along a friend.
Wise: I'm assuming you're talking about Clint Eastwood and his chair.
Werth: I sure am. And even if not everyone loves that he is one of Hollywood's most vocal Republicans, no one can deny that he is one of Hollywood's top talents. Starting off his career snarling in 1960s spaghetti westerns, then snarling as America's favorite dirty cop in the '70s, he eventually went on to become one of the most lauded directors of the past two decades.
His first time occupying the director's chair came in 1971 with the thriller Play Misty for Me. Doing double-duty as both director and star, Eastwood plays Dave Garver, a late-night, Carmel, CA DJ who likes to play jazz and woo women. One groupie in particular is Evelyn, a neurotic chippie who calls the show frequently purring, "Play 'Misty' for me," into the phone. When she shows up at Dave's favorite bar wearing a leather mini and kiki shag hair-do, it's a little jarring realizing that Evelyn is being played by none other than a young, pre-Arrested Development Jessica Walter.
Wise: Please don't tell me he spins Lucille Bluth's platter.
Werth: He does... a couple times. But when he tries to end it so he can return to his ex-girlfriend, Tobie (Donna Mills), Evelyn isn't having any of it. Soon she is following him on his beach dates, staging hysterical screaming fits in front of potential employers and attempting suicide in his bathroom.
Wise: Is there a rabbit boiling in a pot at some point?
Werth: The parallels with Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction (1987) are unmistakable, but Misty is missing the sexiness, the tense pacing, and the terrifying character development of Fatal Attraction.
Eastwood's acting feels more empty than conflicted or scared, and his use of long shots and voice over instead of actual conversation puts a distance between us and the characters, even if said characters are rolling around in a forest like a soft-core '70's Coke ad.
Wise: I'm suddenly very thirsty.
Werth: One scene does point towards Eastwood's bright directorial future. Dave visits the actual Monterey Jazz Festival and the footage is electric, perfectly capturing the excitement of the crowd in a documentary style. It shows that even as a novice Eastwood was learning to effectively capture mood and style for a film audience.
Wise: Another of the few misfires in Eastwood's oeuvre is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Based on John Berendt's non-fiction novel of the same name, the film stars John Cusack as John Kelso (a fictionalized stand-in for Berendt), a writer for Town and Country who travels to Savannah, GA, to write a story on the annual Christmas party thrown by the flamboyant Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), only to be dragged into the mystery surrounding the murder of Williams' hot-headed boyfriend Billy Hanson (Jude Law).
Werth: Kevin Spacey only wishes his boyfriend was Jude Law...
Wise: The book had been on the best seller list for almost four years by the time the film came out, making Eastwood's task of meeting audience expectations nearly impossible. Still, some of the choices he and screenwriter John Lee Hancock made seem absolutely wrong-headed, particularly the transformation of Berendt's careful examination of the vagaries of Savannah society into simply a parade of eccentrics.
Cusack's task wasn't any easier: Berendt's authorial voice remains resolutely in the background of the book, giving full reign to his characters, while Cusack attempts to bring this observer into the foreground with little success.
The introduction of a love interest to the character (Eastwood's own daughter Alison Eastwood playing an invented florist who belts Tin Pan Alley hits in her free time) only muddies the character even more.
Werth: Eastwood's nepotism knows no bounds when it comes to singing. He also squeezed his warbling daughter Morgan into the otherwise wonderful documentary, Johnny Mercer: The Dream's on Me in 2009.
Wise: Despite these problems, the film still offers many pleasures, particularly Kevin Spacey's performance. He masterfully deploys a bourbon-inflected drawl that both seduces and chills the audience, making his Jim Williams just as compelling and just as mysterious as the actual case that Berendt wrote about. Jude Law also does excellent (although limited) work as the tempestuous lover, making Billy a sexy time bomb waiting to explode.
Perhaps the stand-out performance of the film is by the Lady Chablis playing herself as a kind of Girl Friday to Cusack. She brings humor and pathos to the film, and frankly makes a much more compelling partner to Cusack than Alison Eastwood's drab Mandy.
Werth: When your name is a wine product, you tend to attract attention.
Wise: Also of note is the really wonderful soundtrack of Johnny Mercer hits performed by such luminaries as Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Diana Krall and the director himself. Mercer came from Savannah and his ancestral home was the site of the murder; using his songs to score the film gives it a texture and authenticity it would otherwise have lacked.
Werth: The same thing Eastwood achieved for the RNC with his chair scolding.
Wise: I'm happy as long as we both vote for more Film Gab next week.
Werth: Wuzzup, Wise?
Wise: Oh, hi, Werth. Just give me a minute; I'm feeling kind of queasy.
Werth: Lose a fight with a Doritos Locos Taco?
Wise: No, I just got back from an afternoon in the park and was horrified to witness some dude proposing to his girlfriend...in song.
Werth: Was the girl Zooey Deschanel?
Wise: Hardly. She was an earnest, non-profit type in desperate need of a VO5 Hot Oil treatment. And he looked like a branch bank assistant manager who spends all his vacations at Disneyland.
Werth: Love is in the air. It must have something to do with Jason Segel's new flick The Five Year Engagement.
Wise: It certainly does get me thinking about great films featuring couples hoping to get hitched. Like The Harvey Girls (1946) starring Judy Garland as Susan Bradley, an Ohio gal with such a longing for adventure that she answers an ad in a lonely hearts column and gets engaged to a dreamboat from the Wild West whom she's never met. The only problem is that her rodeo Romeo turns out to be a marble mouthed dummy played by Chill Wills.
Werth: She might have had better luck using Grindr.
Wise: It turns out that all the letters Judy exchanged with her beau were ghost written by saloon owner Ned Trent (John Hodiak). She breaks the engagement and goes to work at the brand new Fred Harvey Restaurant in town—part of a chain of restaurants that followed the railroads out west and exerted a huge influence on civilizing the cowboys and merchandizing the Native Americans.
Of course, this influx of manners and good food doesn't sit well with the corrupt local judge or the lead dance hall girl, Em (a delightful Angela Lansbury in spangles, a corset and a lot of green eye shadow), who want the cowboys to keep drinking and carousing instead of cleaning up and marrying the lady waitresses at the Harvey House.
Werth: I'd do a lot for a good plate of meatloaf, but I'd never give up Angela Lansbury.
Wise: The film was originally conceived as a traditional western starring Lana Turner and Clark Gable—
Werth: So it wasn't the first time Judy got Lana's sloppy seconds.
Wise: But MGM's legendary musical producer Arthur Freed was convinced that the story would make a perfect vehicle for Judy (also so he could shoehorn his mistress Lucille Bremer into Yolanda and the Thief opposite Fred Astaire which was the picture Judy wanted to make). Mostly Freed was right.
Judy is marvelous in the film, especially her showstopping rendition of the Harry Warren/Johnny Mercer hit "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Sante Fe." Less successful was her chemistry with Hodiak, making their on-screen romance something of a bust, but she does have a few magical moments with her Wizard of Oz co-star Ray Bolger. Still, with a cast that includes Cyd Charisse, Marjorie Main and Virginia O'Brien, it's hard not to fall in love with this singing saddles confection.
Werth: Western engagements are nice, but I prefer my engagement flicks hard-boiled. The betrothal in film-noir classic Laura (1944) ends on a bit of a sour note, with the lucky, young bride-to-be found shot dead in her apartment.
Wise: Well, that's one less tacky bachelorette party the world has to endure.
Werth: Dashing detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) learns through his investigation that stunning, smart corpse Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) was engaged to low-life playboy Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price).
Wise: Engaged to The Abominable Dr. Phibes? Maybe it's all for the best that she's dead.
Werth: But were they really engaged? Poison-pen man-about-town Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) reveals to McPherson in a series of flashbacks that Laura hadn't decided to marry Shelby yet, and that Laura's rich, spinster aunt Ann Treadwell (the eternally delicious Judith Anderson) would rather be the the one carrying the bouquet down the aisle with Shelby.
Complicating matters is the fact that McPherson during the course of his investigation has fallen in love with the victim, spending hours hanging out with her well-lit portrait over the fireplace and drinking her whiskey.
Wise: I do that sometimes with my picture of Margaret Hamilton.
Werth: As convoluted as it all sounds, one of the most famous cinematic twists happens about half-way through and turns the whole movie upside down, making any further discussion of the plot a guaranteed spoiler.
While many speak of Laura as a typical noir, to be fair, it doesn't have the gritty nature that many other crime flicks of the era have. Director Otto Preminger skillfully built the mystery and suspense with refined wit and sophistication instead of dingy bars and dark alleys. The characters of Laura are a well-heeled crew who kill as much with bon mots as they do .38 specials.
Standing at the top of this stylish pack is Lydecker. Webb's performance as the acid-tongued critic is joyously arch and earned him an Academy Award nomination. His police interview from a bathtub is the epitome of cheek, and if you ask me, totally gay.
Wise: And who wouldn't ask you?
Werth: With two of the best-looking leads and a bevy of the era's best character actors, Laura is an engagement no one should miss.
Wise: Speaking of engagements, how's about you and me head to the park and marry a pair of those Doritos Loco Tacos?
Werth: As long as the honeymoon's over in time for next week's Film Gab.
Wise: Another of the few misfires in Eastwood's oeuvre is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). Based on John Berendt's non-fiction novel of the same name, the film stars John Cusack as John Kelso (a fictionalized stand-in for Berendt), a writer for Town and Country who travels to Savannah, GA, to write a story on the annual Christmas party thrown by the flamboyant Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), only to be dragged into the mystery surrounding the murder of Williams' hot-headed boyfriend Billy Hanson (Jude Law). 
Wise: The book had been on the best seller list for almost four years by the time the film came out, making Eastwood's task of meeting audience expectations nearly impossible. Still, some of the choices he and screenwriter John Lee Hancock made seem absolutely wrong-headed, particularly the transformation of Berendt's careful examination of the vagaries of Savannah society into simply a parade of eccentrics. 
Wise: Despite these problems, the film still offers many pleasures, particularly Kevin Spacey's performance. He masterfully deploys a bourbon-inflected drawl that both seduces and chills the audience, making his Jim Williams just as compelling and just as mysterious as the actual case that Berendt wrote about. Jude Law also does excellent (although limited) work as the tempestuous lover, making Billy a sexy time bomb waiting to explode. 
Wise: Also of note is the really wonderful soundtrack of Johnny Mercer hits performed by such luminaries as Tony Bennett, k.d. lang, Diana Krall and the director himself. Mercer came from Savannah and his ancestral home was the site of the murder; using his songs to score the film gives it a texture and authenticity it would otherwise have lacked. 
